Mac Word 2008: file corruption / weird text kerning

I created a couple important documents around November 2011 using Mac Word 2008. Recently, when I open these files, they appear corrupted. Specifically, character spacing is messed up. Words overlap each other to the point of being unreadable.

The font used is Helvetica of various sizes. If I turn kerning off, the words display correctly. However, I'm curious if anyone knows why this is happening in the first place. When the files were created, text kerning was on and everything displayed properly. Additionally, I am able to create new documents with text kerning on without problems. Any ideas as to what causes these old files to suddenly display incorrectly? Any way to fix it?

I know the easy fix is to turn off kerning. But, I do prefer the look when it is turned on and kerns correctly.

Thanks for any advice!

What program or utility are you using to turn on text kerning? Also note that not all fonts kern the same way. Have you tried turning on kerning using a font other than Helvetica?

Hi chscag, thanks for your interest.

I'm using Word 2008. No special program or utility. From the Word format font menu, I've selected the character spacing tab and checked the "kerning for fonts" box.

I checked the kerning with other fonts. Arial, Calibri, Comic Sans, Garamond, and Times New Roman all display correctly. Oddly, the only other font I tried that did not display properly is Helvetica Neue. For now, I've simply turned off kerning but I'm still curious about what might be causing this aberration.

I just checked using Word 2011 with different fonts including Helvetica and they seem to display OK even when the auto spacing 100% feature is turned on with kerning. My copy of Word 2008 is installed on my MacBook which currently is not here to try the same thing. I'll be able to test it tomorrow from the office though.

I'm not sure the font spacing options in Word 2008 are the same as Word 2011 so take what I said above with a grain of salt.

same thing plus interaction with tabs

This just started for me too -- definitely kerning and maybe an interaction with tabs too. Same document is fine in Word 2011 on another Mac so it's a 2008 thing. I've seen it with Minion and Trajan Pro. Not sure whether it happened with Lion upgrade or something else.